


Late Night Comfort

by FireOpal (Sandel)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, F/F, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 07:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9982721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandel/pseuds/FireOpal
Summary: Three times that Eloise comforts Susan after tragedy strikes.---Written for TreacleTart'sTake It Seriously Challenge(where it got shared 1:st place!)andlovegood27'sRandom Pairing Challengeover at hpfanfictalk.com.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompts "Eloise Midgen/Susan Bones" and "late night comfort after a tragedy occurs."

They return to the Hufflepuff Common Room late, a subdued group of students dressed in all black, even though they’re not wearing their school robes.  
  
Death.  
  
This is the second funeral for a Hufflepuff student that Susan has been to in less than eight months. It’s different from Cedric in many ways, of course. Sally-Anne wasn’t murdered – she just wasted away, sick with a disease that ate at her energy, then at her magic, and at last at her very life force. And yet it’s exactly the same – a young life cut far too short.  
  
Sally-Anne didn’t even get to take the O.W.Ls that she’d studied so hard for – even in her very last days she’d had her copy of Intermediate Transfiguration lying on her bedside table at St Mungo’s. Whenever one of them visited from Hogwarts she’d always ask what they were studying, and she’d once confided in Susan that she’d practise non-verbal magic when she couldn’t sleep at night, so as not to wake anyone else in her ward up.  
  
“I was getting really good at it too,” she’d said, “but my magic is almost gone now, and…”  
  
She hadn’t finished that thought.

* * *

As her Housemates silently drift off to their dormitories, Susan lags behind. She doesn’t feel like sleeping yet, and she doesn’t feel like staying up exchanging platitudes with Hannah, Megan and Sophie. Instead she stays in the Common Room, taking a seat in the armchair closest to the fireplace – the chair that used to be Sally-Anne’s. After she got sick all the Hufflepuff students somehow silently agreed that she’d be the armchair’s sole user for as long as she needed it.  
  
Now, Susan supposes, they will all get back to fighting over it every night – at least as soon as Sally-Anne’s spirit stops looming over it. Right now wrapping herself up in that very spirit is the exact thing Susan wants. She pulls her legs up into the chair and wraps a threadbare, orangey blanket around herself, and settles down to stare into the fire, like Sally-Anne used to do.

* * *

Half an hour later Susan’s reveries are disturbed by the sound of footsteps, loud in the night’s silence.  
  
“Hello?” comes from the end of the tunnel leading to the girl dormitories a moment later. “Susan?”  
  
Susan looks up as the speaker moves into the Common Room, and into the light from the fire place. Eloise Midgeon, a girl from the year above Susan’s. They know each other the way all Hufflepuffs know each other, but they’ve never really talked before.  
  
“What do you want?” Susan asks, too raw for pleasantries.  
  
Eloise winces as her tone, but somehow manages to make the grimace look sympathetic.  
  
“I saw the way you used to look at her, you know,” Eloise replies, her acne-scarred face earnest in the flickering light from the fire.  
  
Susan just looks at her for a moment, uncomprehending. Then the meaning clicks, and she sighs. She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing.  
  
“I mean, it’s not – it’s none of my business, of course, and I’ll leave if you want to be alone, it’s just… I’m – I’m like that too, I think,” Eloise stammers out in a rushed jumble, as if the weight of their shared silence had become too much for her.  
  
Again it takes a moment for Susan to understand what the older girl means. And then…  
  
“You are!?” she blurts, and for a moment she finds herself getting excited. Then the wet heaviness of grief presses down on her again.  
  
“Um, yeah… I mean, I think so. Er… Yeah.”  
  
It’s hard to tell in the dim light, but Susan thinks she can see Eloise blush under her pimples.  
  
“Have you told anyone?” she asks.  
  
Eloise shakes her head, making her mousy curls dance.  
  
“How about you?” she asks back. “Did – did Sally-Anne… know?”  
  
The question hits Susan like a punch.  
  
No, she didn’t, because I’m a bloody coward, she doesn’t say.  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says instead. Curtly.  
  
“Oh.” Eloise’s face falls, and Susan wonders if she wears all her emotions so much on her sleeve. “I can leave if you want, I just wanted to check on you…”  
  
“No, stay!” Susan says, surprising herself. “Just… let’s talk about something else. Like… how did you realise that you’re – that you like girls?”  
  
As soon as the words are out her mouth Susan realises that that’s a pretty invasive question, but tonight she doesn’t care.  
  
Eloise doesn’t seem to mind, either. Her brows furrow, and as she thinks she absentmindedly draws another armchair up to the fire and sits down next to Susan.  
  
“I don’t know, really,” she says at last. “It kind of crept up on me. I used to care so much about what boys thought about me, about how I look. I wanted to be pretty, but…”  
  
She waves her hand in front of her face.  
  
“Anyway, I think it was when Professor Grubbly-Plank came back to fill in for Professor Hagrid again – not that I’m in love with her or anything!”  
  
Eloise sounds so mortified that Susan can’t help but smile, though it’s a weak smile that quickly dies again. Eloise doesn’t even notice, she’s too wrapped up in her own story. Her words come rushing out like a dam breaking, and Susan wonders if she carries a dam like that in her own chest – and what would have happened if she’d let it break in front of Sally-Anne. Her thoughts drift off in dangerous directions, and when she snaps out of it she realises she’s missed a large part of Eloise’s tale.  
  
“She wears her hair short and doesn’t care what anyone thinks,” Eloise says as Susan turns her attention back to her. She assumes she’s still talking about Professor Grubbly-Plank.  
  
“And it’s weird, because last year when we had her I hardly thought about her at all, but now as soon as I saw her I just knew it – that’s what I want. I want to cut my hair short and be great at my job and not care about my acne. I mean, I’ve always hated my hair, but I just assumed I’d have to live with it forever – and I don’t! My mum would freak out if I cut it all off, of course, but still… and as I kept realising things about myself, one of them was that I think I like girls instead of boys. But it’s not like I know for sure or anything – I mean, I’ve never even kissed a girl!”  
  
After that exclamation, Eloise grows pensive for a moment, then she speaks again.  
  
“Have you?” she asks, curiosity setting her pale blue eyes alight. “Kissed a girl, that is.”  
  
Susan shakes her head, still trying to catch up with Eloise’s deluge of words.  
  
“No… no…” she says, her voice hoarse. “I never even… Uh…”  
  
She falls silent, caught unawares in memories she’s been pushing away for months. And then, before she even knows what she’s saying, she finds herself speaking again, spilling honesty like precious pearls.  
  
“You know,” she says, “I’ve imagined so many times what it would feel like to kiss Sally-Anne, and I didn’t think it’d ever actually happen, of course, but – but not like this, not like never-never, not like death.”  
  
And now Susan’s tears finally start to fall, the tears that have eluded her ever since she saw Sophie’s face grow ashen as she read of death in a letter from St Mungo’s. It starts slowly, her eyes silently spilling over, but soon it grows far more violent.  
  
As a momentous sob rips through Susan’s body, Eloise shoots up from her chair and almost lunges at Susan to hug her. The two of them shuffle awkwardly for a moment, until Eloise is seated at the armrest of Susan’s chair, with her arms around Susan.  
  
And Susan lets herself be held.


End file.
